April 23, 2010

Unusual Tales - A World Where I Was King





"Unusual Tales", a series presenting Steve Ditko's comics from 1957 to 1959 that are in the public domain.

From Charlton's MYSTERIES OF UNEXPLORED WORLDS #3 [1957] comes the 5-page "A World Where I Was King".

It's an odd little bit of comedic fantasy about a clumsy young man named Jonesy who trips and finds himself in a fairy tale world with a beautiful queen named Mmmmm.

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but if you just let it roll over you it's an enjoyable tale, and Ditko sells both the fantasy and the humour nicely.

The fight scenes in particular are worth paying attention to, as you can clearly see the roots of the acrobatic action so familiar from his later work on Spider-Man, the Creeper and others.

By the way, I don't really focus a lot on them in these posts, but a lot of these stories have some very nice lettering in the story titles.

Some links to check out:
Buy Ditko's creator-owned work
And for that action in Killjoy and Shag, too, see DITKO PACKAGE
Find out about the fanzine DITKOMANIA
Great fan art and articles in every issue
Check out new and upcoming Ditko publications
Spider-Man available in various formats
Download public domain comics, likely including the one this story is from
scans in this series generally adapted to my personal tastes from those copies

As this story appears in the Snyder/Ditko OUT OF THIS WORLD #20, I'm only showing the first page below.

Click images to big-up.


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